Announcement of events in Kharkiv to The International Coming Out Day 2017

Musical performance in support of the visibility of LGBT people. On October 11th. On 18.30. Kharkov, Universitetska str., 5 near Historical museum.

Coming out is a free and voluntary self-disclosure of one’s sexual orientation or gender identity. And it’s directly connected to a person’s feeling of dignity and self-respect.

People whose self-identification is in harmony with their biological sex and people who are heterosexual don’t need to come out, because other people just assume their gender and their default relationship model.

But a lot of homosexual, bisexual and transgender people experience discrimination and suffer from others’ hatred.

You can chat about your personal life with a wrong colleague and be fired,or make friends with somebody on the Internet and be abandoned by your family, or go home from a nightclub and find yourself in a hospital badly injured.
And if you’re Mary, but the name on your ID is John (it’s very hard to change sex legally in Ukraine) you don’t have to do anything at all, and become a murder victim.

Just imagine that it’s you who’s living in permanent anxiety, waiting for some danger all the time, though you never have done anything wrong.

That’s why some lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) are tired of hiding. We want a society with more freedom, more safety and more support. We want to stop being invisible.

We want to live in an open, free and safe society, where different people support each other. We know that sexual orientation is an inherent part of everyone’s life. And it’s not just about sex – it’s about relationships, family, music, subculture and even sense of humour.

Today, on October 11th we have gathered to say:
We are here, we are different, and we live in this city too!

How are human rights curtailed in Ukraine based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity?

Hate crimes
In Ukraine, homophobic, biphobic and transphobic attacks, harassing, bashing, tortures, humiliation, and blackmail are qualified as hooliganism, not hate crimes. Even when murders are committed because of anti-LGBT prejudice, the courts don’t take it into account.

Registration of marriage
Legal marriage means that marriage partners are able to visit each other in intensive care, make important and sometime lifesaving decisions about their dear one’s lives, and, finally, be buried together and leave inheritance to each other. Their union is protected by government. All these things are unavailable for same-sex partners.

Lack of access to skilled medical care
It’s superhard to find treatment for gender dysphoria (the painful distress a person experiences as a result of the mismatch between sex they were assigned at birth and their gender identity) in Ukraine – because of both legal problems and absense of qualified specialists.